January
7, 1972 - A man and woman successfully hijack a B-727 from
San
Francisco, CA to Cuba.

January 7,
1972 - A Braniff B-727 was
hijacked as it departed Houston, TX for Dallas. The lone armed hijacker
allowed all 94 passengers to deplane at Dallas Love Field, but continued
to hold the 7 crew members hostage, demanding to fly to south America and
asking for $2 Million, parachutes, and jungle survival gear. After a
6-hour standoff, the entire crew secretly fled while the hijacker was
distracted examining the contents of a package delivered by Dallas police
who stormed the jet, and arrested the hijacker without serious incident.

January 28, 1972 - TWA Flight #2 from Los Angeles to
New York, was hijacked by a con man and bank robber while over Chicago. He
demanded $306,800 in cash (for his loss in a recent court case). He also
requested the release of Angela Davis and another friend in prison, and
clemency from President Nixon. The FBI was able to retake the aircraft
during a crew change at JFK, and the hijacker was shot and wounded. No one
else was hurt.

New York + Las Vegas
- Skyjackings

March 7-8,
1972 - Following labor disputes at
TWA, a man organized an extortion plot against the airline and warned
that four bombs had been planted aboard TWA jets and would go off
over an 18-hour period. However he said he would provide the bomb's
locations if paid $2. Million. The first bomb, aboard a B-707,
leaving New York for Los Angeles, returned and a bomb was diffused in a
briefcase in the cockpit, just 12 minutes before detonation.

The
next day a bomb exploded on a TWA B-707 parked at Las Vegas - no
one was on the jet, which had just arrived from New York seven hours
earlier.

The jet was searched before departure, but someone managed to
sneak a bomb in to the aft portion of the cockpit or the forward lavatory.
The B-707 was a total loss. TWA never paid the ransom. The
extortionist was never heard from again.

(Lockheed
TriStar L-1011)

April 14, 1972 - The First
Lockheed TriStar L-1011 (400 passengers)three-engine,
wide-body, medium-to-long range airliner was type-certified by the FAA.

Eastern Air Lines inaugurated scheduled
L-1011 service with a flight from Miami to New York. Eastern Air Lines
nicknamed the L-1011 as the "WhisperLiner".

The main visible difference between the TriStar and the Douglas
DC-10 is the middle/tail engine. The DC-10's engine is mounted
above the fuselage for simplicity of design and more economical
construction. The TriStar's engine is mounted to the rear fuselage
and fed through an S-duct (similar to the B-727) for reduced drag
and easier replacement.

MIDDLE/TAIL ENGINE COMPARISON

The L-1011 was manufactured in Lockheed facilities in Burbank and
Palmdale, California and faced brisk competition with the B-747 and
the DC-10 which it closely resembled.

Sales of the L-1011
were hampered by two years of delays due to developmental and financial
problems at Rolls-Royce, the sole manufacturer of the TriStar's
engines.

Delta Air Lines was the TriStar's largest customer, and
Cathay Pacific acquired over 20 L-1011's when Eastern
Air Lines went bankrupt.

Production of the L-1011 ended
in 1983 with 250 delivered to airlines. McDonnell Douglas sold
446 DC-10s. (Five L-1011's have been involved in fatal
accidents.)

Lockheed no longer competed against Boeing and McDonnell
Douglas in the commercial transport field. However, Lockheed is still a
major producer of military aircraft.

May 4-6,
1972 - A man successfully hijacks a B-737 from Salt Lake City to
Los Angeles to Cuba.

May 16, 1972 - President Nixon signed
into law the Air Traffic Controllers Career Program Act (An
outgrowth of a Corson Committee recommendation). The new law authorized
controllers to retire after 25 years of active duty, or at age 50 if they
had 20 years of active service. It also established a mandatory age for
retirement at 56, with exemptions up to age 61. The Act also provided for
a "second career program" of up to two years of training, at government
expense, for controllers who had to leave traffic control work because of
medical or proficiency disqualification.

May 30, 1972 -
-
Ft. Worth, TX

May 30,
1972 - Greater Southwest International
Airport - Ft. Worth, Texas. While conducting a training flight a Delta
Airlines McDonnell Douglas DC-9 began to oscillate about the roll
axis after crossing the runway threshold during a landing approach, then
rolled rapidly to the right and struck the runway with the right wing low.
The flight's crash has been attributed to wake turbulence behind a
McDonnell Douglas DC-10 that made a touch-and-go landing ahead of
it.

The DC-9's occupants included three pilots and an
FAA inspector, all of whom were killed in the crash and subsequent
fire. (4 Fatalities)

The
FAA promptly implemented new changes to the minimum distance that aircraft
must maintain when following 'heavy' aircraft.

from Los Angeles to Seattle was skyjacked by Ex-Black Panthers: Willie Roger
Holder, (African-American Vietnam veteran) and his white stripper
girlfriend (masseuse and small-time drug dealer) Catherine Marie Kerkow.
The skyjacker commandeered the B-727 when he claimed he had a bomb
in an attaché case and demanded $500,000, and a longer-range jet in San
Francisco.

Stewardess Gina Cutcher was confronted by the passenger from 18D, a
handsome black man in a crispy pressed Army Captain's uniform with several
ribbons. Skyjacker Willie Holder gave her two 3x5 cards and said "read
this". The first card was a poorly handwritten list of instructions for
the crew.

The 2nd Cardwas a drawing of what
appeared to be a briefcase and writing to the left describing U.S. Army
plastic explosives; a clock, batteries, and a concussion hand grenade with
a 1-second delay after the pin is pulled.

Crutcher was told to take the notes to the cockpit, and that she had
just two minutes.

Captain Jerome Juergens gave the notes to his co-pilot,
Edward Richardson, and calmly told Cutcher: "Go back and tell this
man we'll comply with anything he wants us to do."

Skyjacker Willie Holder
24, demanded, in addition to $500,000 in cash and a longer-range jet
in San Francisco, the release of black militant Angela Davis, an
American political activist, scholar and author.

A national prominent activist and radical in the 1960s, Angela was a
leader of the Communist Party USA, and had close relations with the Black
Panther Party.

She was a candidate twice for Vice President on the
Communist Party USA ticket during the 1980s.

Willie Holder
originally demanded the release of Angela Davis, but made no mention of
that demand as the hijacking progressed.

Mr. Holder served with distinction in Vietnam. he flew with the 68th
Assault
Helicopter Company. However, he couldn't handle the bloodshed and killing
and fell apart, was court-martialed, imprisoned and demoted.

Ms. Kerkow in high school in Oregon, hijacked Western Flt. #701, arrested
in Paris, France
for air piracy, disappeared from France (possibly to Switzerland), was
last seen in 1978, and
the FBI said she is still a Federal fugitive.

Arriving
in San Francisco, when the Skyjackers received the $500,000 and
a four-engine Western Airlines Boeing-720 jet, they released forty of the
98 passengers and crew of 7.

Arriving
at JFK Airport in New York, to refuel for the long trip across
the Atlantic Ocean, Skyjacker Willie Holder demanded and got a navigator
to guide the jet carrying 4 crew members to Algiers, Algeria (a haven for
American radicals.)

After 20 hours, Western Airlines Flight #701 from Los Angeles to San
Francisco to New York City, finally landed in Algiers, Algeria.

A USA
Federal Grand Jury indicted Willie Roger Holder and Catherine Marie Kerkow
on charges of air piracy and kidnapping. The penalty for each count is 20
years in prison and a $20,000 fine.

Skyjackers Willie Holder and Cathy
Kerkow were taken into custody by the Algerians, who also returned all but
about $20,000. of the ransom money to Western Airlines. Algeria granted
the skyjackers political asylum.

However, a request for extradition was
denied as the government of Algeria allowed them to stay. Three months
later Skyjacker Willie Holder was proclaimed the leader of a small band of
Black Panthers exiled in Algeria.

Paris,
France, January 1975 - Skyjackers Holder and Kerkow, according
to passports retrieved by French police, had made several trips to France,
but this time they had a problem with the law, and were arrested. In
Washington, the FBI identified the pair as Willie Roger Holder and
Catherine Marie Kerkow.

An FBI spokesman said extradition was being pressed by the Justice and
State Departments. He said the pair was indicted by Federal Grand Juries
in New York and San Francisco on charges including air piracy, kidnapping
and extortion.

Mr. Holder and Ms. Kerkow were arrested in France in 1975. He was tried
in Paris in 1980 on air piracy charges, the first person ever to face a
French court for having hijacked an airliner abroad. Found guilty, he was
let go with a suspended five-year prison sentence.

While in Paris, they
were supported by the French intellectual establishment, and treated as
national celebrities. However Holder experienced bouts of paranoia and
anxiety and spent time in a Marxist Psychiatric Institute outside of
Paris. In 1984 he met and married "a six-time divorcee, 12 years his
senior" who was paralyzed on one side of her body.

Ms. Kerkow became a
part of the Parisian creative elite, became fluent in French, and enjoyed
life with a series of wealthy boyfriends before vanishing forever one
night in 1978.

Arriving
again back at JFK Airport in New York - 1986

An Air France
flight brought Willie Holder, now 38 years old, back to the United States.
He was escorted by French security officers who
turned him over to agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Willie Holder was held at the Metropolitan Correctional Center
pending arraignment in Federal Court in Brooklyn. He served 3 years in
detention before he was transferred to a halfway house in San Diego, CA.

Fast
forward to 1991 in San Diego - Willie Holder was arrested again
in an alleged plot to hijack another passenger jet with the use of plastic
explosives. Now 42, and unemployed, Willie was arrested in an apartment
that he shared with his wife and brother.

Although he was under
investigation for planning another hijacking, Holder was instead charged
with violating his federal parole. Holder allegedly asked an undercover
agent from the California Bureau of Organized Crime and Criminal
intelligence to help him obtain C-4 plastic explosives and various
firearms and ammunition. He was introduced to the agent by an informant,
and intended to hijack a passenger jet at San Diego's Lindbergh Field and
demand "millions in ransom."

Federal prosecutors in New York, where Holder had earlier pleaded
guilty to charges of air piracy, were undecided whether or not to pursue
charges connected to the alleged hijacking plot.

On February 6, 2012, Willie Roger Holder died of a burst aneurysm. PFC
US ARMY VIETNAM was buried in Fort Rosencrans National Cemetery in San
Diego, California.

FBI
Fugative - (Last seen in 1978)

Probably changed her lifestyle and may still be in
France or possibly Switzerland.

Author Brendan I. Koerner writes the yarn about this 1972 hijacking,
after several years of research and reviewing many documents and records
including FBI files.

Flying was a different world back then, in 1972. No
X-Ray machines, no metal detectors, no TSA personnel, no inconveniences.
You could smoke on the planes, and some airlines even allowed you to buy
your tickets after takeoff.

Skyjackers took advantage of this lack of
security, and were often disgruntled veterans, compulsive gamblers,
bankrupt businessmen, career felons, and Cubans wanting to go back to
Havana. In most cases, they demanded are received ransoms and wanted fresh
starts someplace else.